


whale fall

by kosy



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Horror Elements, POV Second Person, Post Season Six, i think mike and jaylen should be friends! fuck!, pre season nine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26762806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosy/pseuds/kosy
Summary: At the end of the day you go home. It’s not something you were thinking about, really, when you… came back. You were gone and then you weren’t. Simple, or at least simple enough that you could accept it. But at the end of the day you go home because you have to go home, because that’s how the world works and you’re a part of the world again, for better or for worse. You haven’t decided yet.
Relationships: Jaylen Hotdogfingers & Mike Townsend, Jaylen Hotdogfingers & The Garages
Comments: 27
Kudos: 50





	whale fall

**Author's Note:**

> bit the bullet and wrote this dang fic to get it out of my system. i care jaylen hotdogfingers so much. she and townsend are wlw-mlm solidarity. also, disclaimer: some aspects of this may clash with the accepted fcanon on the wiki (not totally sure), but i hope you all enjoy regardless!

At the end of the day you go home. It’s not something you were thinking about, really, when you… came back. You were gone and then you weren’t. Simple, or at least simple enough that you could accept it. But at the end of the day you go home because you have to go home, because that’s how the world works and you’re a part of the world again, for better or for worse. You haven’t decided yet. 

But you don’t have a car, why the hell would you have a car? you were _dead,_ so you sit on the sidewalk outside the hangar and stick out a thumb. Cars rush by. It’s getting dark. Nobody wants to pick up a hitchhiker in the dark. Picking up a rando in the daytime, that’s an adventurous thing. That’s something fun to tell your friends, that’s maybe even a new friend in the making. Letting someone into your car at night, their baseball cap ripped up and a little charred, their hands cold and fingernails torn like they just clawed themselves out of the grave—that’s just pure idiocy. 

Anyway, you can’t call an Uber ‘cause you don’t have money anymore, it’s at your house along with your credit cards assuming that your stuff didn’t get repossessed by the government, and you’d sorta figured earlier that you’d just bum a ride off Teddy or another teammate. Or, you know, _Mike,_ Mike who always gave you rides even when all you gave him was shit for dropping the figurative and literal ball. They’re gone now, though. All of them. For all their purported joy at seeing your face alive and whole. Maybe they fucked off to a bar somewhere. Maybe they just went back to their own apartments to make dinner with their partners and practice their instruments and watch TV. Living out their normal lives. 

You don’t blame them, you really don’t. It would’ve been nice, though, to talk with someone you knew. You’ve got a lot to catch up on. 

You watch the cars pass. The sky is dull, heavy grey. Looks like rain. 

Eventually a car rolls to a stop ten feet ahead of where you’re sitting, so, cautiously, you push yourself to your feet and approach the driver's side window, which rolls down squeakily. 

It’s a young woman, maybe 21 at the oldest. She’s white-knuckling the wheel but other than that her demeanor is calm, even if it’s just an act. 

“Hi,” she says. “Need a ride?” 

“Yeah,” you say. “That, uh, that’d be nice.” You don’t recognize your own voice anymore. It sounds like you’ve been smoking 20 packs a day for the last decade. Which, to be fair, you _were_ smoke for a while, so, hey, close enough, maybe. 

She squints at you. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

You blink back at her. You’re wearing a baseball jersey and cap, both of which proclaim “The Seattle Garages” in large font. Your last name is literally on the back of your shirt. 

“Nah, probably not,” you say. “Can I get in?” 

“Right, yeah,” she says, smiling nervously. “Of course.” And she unlocks the doors of her Honda Odyssey and you get in. 

You give her your address and she nods and turns up the volume on the radio, and you tilt your head back and close your eyes and listen to the acoustic rock that spills tinnily out of the speakers. It’s vaguely reminiscent of the Garages—hell, for all you know, it _is_ the Garages. It isn’t like you’ve heard any of their latest releases. 

“You hear that Jaylen Hotdogfingers got brought back?” The driver taps her fingers against the wheel, still valiantly pretending she’s not tense, that everything is normal. “Necromancy or something.” 

You decide to play along. “For real?” 

“I mean, I don’t really follow blaseball, sports aren’t really my thing, but it’s the only thing the DJs have been talking about all afternoon.”

As if to prove her point, the song fades out and the radio announcer—you think his name’s Kevin Kayes or something equally alliterative, you’ve had to do press tour interviews with him before—leaps in immediately. “Alright, that was ‘Fight Gods’ by the Garages. And fight gods they did! That call to action was no joke, Seattle; today the Garages spit in the face of mortality itself and resurrected star pitcher Jaylen Hotdogfingers. If you heard a horrible, ominous shriek earlier today, like the fabric of reality itself was being ripped in half, and then thunderous cheering, like the fabric of reality itself was being ripped in half, that would be why!” 

“Turn it off,” you say, before you even mean to speak at all. 

The woman turns around in her seat. “What?” 

“Turn it _off,”_ you snarl, and the woman flinches and does so. 

“Sorry,” she says weakly. “I didn’t mean to, um… just, sorry.” 

“Don’t be,” you tell her, suddenly drained. “Just not a big fan of radio. You couldn’t’ve known.”

“Okay.” She drives in silence, and you lean your forehead against the cold window. You press your thumb into the pulse point of your wrist until it hurts. 

“What’s your name?” the woman asks finally, and you laugh, rough. 

“Jaylen.” 

“I—like, _Hotdogfingers?”_

“Yep. That’s me.” 

“Oh.” 

Your breath fogs up the glass of the window. You breathe now. Isn’t that something. 

* * *

The fucked up thing, the real fucked up thing, is that you’d never asked to come back. Dead is dead. Fairness never factored into it, okay, because yeah, there was the burst of agony and searing heat and that one splitsecond moment of _why me, why am I getting punished for this,_ and then everything was blissfully dark and you were still kind of playing blaseball but not really, not the same way. It sorta felt like trying to do something in a dream: the edges didn’t connect right. You could only pretend it was real if you gave up entirely. 

So, okay, it wouldn’t have been the best way to spend eternity, but you’d accepted it (hazily, but only because everything done in the void was done hazily. There was no other state of being). You were dead. Fine. You were fine with that. 

Except they made you a martyr. Of course they did. You were that first death, that original sin. Of course they would deify you. Of course you wouldn’t just be forgotten. Of course you wouldn’t be permitted to fade away. You are Jaylen Hotdogfingers, and you will never truly die. 

* * *

It’s impossible to miss that they idolize you still. They haven’t taken you off that pedestal even now that your cleats are on the ground again and your face is smudged with dirt and the back of your jersey is soaked with sweat. You spit into the mud, and the rain comes down in sheets. You are Jaylen Hotdogfingers, and you were the pitcher of legends, and you died for their sins, forever and always, amen. You aren’t a person anymore. It’s been so long since you were a person. 

* * *

You shove at Mike’s shoulder, cackling wildly. “You’re such an _idiot!”_ you say gleefully. “Holy shit, all that and you tried to ask him out anyway?” 

“I think it had a certain romantic charm,” he mumbles, trying for sullen but getting stuck on ruefully amused. 

_“Romantic charm_ my ass, Townsend, that’s desperation if I’ve ever seen it.” 

“Pohtaytoe, pohtahtoe.” 

“Please let me wingman for you. I’m begging you, dude. You need all the help you can get.” 

“I am doing _just fine,_ thanks,” Mike mutters, throwing his legs up over yours on the couch. “Can we _please_ watch the movie now.” 

“No, no, I’m not done bullying you yet!” 

He groans. “I feel like you’ve reached your daily quota at this point. Actually, I feel like you reached your daily quota, like, eight hours ago.” 

“Only eight hours? I need to step up my game.” 

“Fuck off,” he grumbles, letting his head thunk back against the arm of the couch. 

You nudge his thigh with your knee. “You good?” 

“Mmmrhggmmhh,” Mike says, eloquent as ever. 

“Seriously, though,” you say. “I can put off Pacific Rim for another couple minutes if you wanna like… talk about something or whatever.” 

“It’s, uh—it’s nothing, dude. Don’t worry about it.” He raises his head and blinks at you owlishly. “You said you had another six-pack in the fridge?” 

“I’m saving that for later,” you say automatically, then sigh. “Okay, fine. Whatever.” 

Mike grins, grown-out mullet flopping into his eyes, and it’s hard to get pissy about that boyish happiness even at the expense of your few good IPAs. “Hell yeah.” He leaps to his feet—he’s got seemingly infinite energy, somehow, even after months of nonstop training and practice and games—and jogs into the kitchen. 

“Get me one too, jackass,” you call after him. You have a certain rockstar cool guy image to keep up, after all, even though you can’t go too hard on either alcohol or drugs these days. Blaseball’s punishing enough without you actively destroying your body. He’s back in a couple seconds, hopping over the sports bag he left on the floor halfway between your kitchen and your living room, and pushes the cold can into your hands. 

“Hot ‘n fresh from the fridge!” he says for reasons far beyond your understanding.

You let him sip his beer in silence for a few seconds, then say, “No, for real though, what’s up?” 

He’s quiet for a long moment, then sighs, looking down at his hands. “Just… I dunno, man. It’s like… we’re famous now, y’know? All of us. All the Garages. We’ve got it made.” 

“Yeah, I know. I’ve been here too.”

“No, I know, but like… I’m just kinda here. Not even that, ‘cause I don’t slip under anybody’s radar. But not for any good reasons. Like, I’m a piece of shit. And kind of an asshole.” 

“You’re not, though,” you say, uncomprehending. “You know you’re not.” 

“Yeah, but like, am I? ‘Cause they’re all saying… I dunno. I get shit all the time, that’s all.” 

You look at him for a long moment, then say, “I’ll lay off. No biggie.”

“You don’t have to do that.” He shakes his head, shoulders hunched. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just really easy for me to… like, make myself look bad. Especially—” He shoots you a look, grimaces. “Look, I don’t wanna sound like I’m blaming you or whatever, Jay, but it’s really easy to look bad whenever you’ve just been on the mound. Like, you’re a legend! You’re Jaylen Hotdogfingers! Everybody loves you, and I’m just Mike fuckin’ Townsend, the asshole who throws the ball at the same place every time I pitch. It’s not like I wanna do that. I mean, I actively try _not_ to do that.” 

“It’s not your fault, dude. We can all only be what we are.” 

“Yeah, sure. I just wish what I am wasn’t this.” He looks like a kid, curled up on your sofa like this, knees tucked neatly to his chest. His thumb is picking at the bottom hem of his jersey. A string’s come loose.

“You’re fine,” you say. “Seriously.” You wish you had poetry, you wish you had monologues, you wish you had the perfect thing to say that would make Mike smile and believe it. You don’t, though. You just have the truth in all its unglory. 

“You mean it?” 

“Wouldn’t’ve said it if I didn’t.” 

“Okay,” he says, small smile pulling at his lips. “Thanks.” 

You grab the remote off the side table and hit play on Pacific Rim. You’ve seen it before, but Mike hasn’t, and he stares at the screen, rapt, and you watch the light flicker across his face. About ten minutes in, he turns to you grinning and asks, “Hey, Jaylen, d’you think we’d be drift compatible?” and you roll your eyes because no matter how you slice it, this is a sad tipsy man in his twenties who is, at this point, tantamount to your annoying kid brother, asking if you think the two of you have a transcendent soulbond. And you still say “Yeah, Mike, I bet we would,” and he smiles even wider. 

* * *

One good thing about death by incineration: you don’t have any time to rot.

* * *

Your pitches suck now. You don’t know when that happened. 

Sure, you’re out of practice by a few years, but they go wild all the time these days, liable to hit a catcher in the face or a batter in the hip. The baseball feels the same as it always has in your hands. Your arm feels the same when you wind it back to throw. Muscles, lungs, bones; it all seems to be in working order except for the fact that your pitches go wild and they hit people and you can feel it too when they hit, like a guitar string being plucked. It rattles through you. It thrums. Moody Cookbook goes up in smoke and you somehow feel lighter, and then suddenly _everybody_ you hit is going up in smoke and you have a debt to be paid and the other players, they look at you like you're doing it on purpose. Maybe you are. Your pitches are your own, despite everything. It is your own free will. 

It should have been fine. You came back. Haven't you given enough? You paid the price, are _still_ paying the price. You kneel at the altar and you are called a blasphemer. 

It’s just— 

It’s not fair. 

* * *

“Why’d you let Mike do that?” you ask Teddy one day, pulling him aside after practice. 

He blinks at you, brow furrowing. “Do what?” 

“You know what,” you snap. “Go. Leave. Trade himself for me. Why’d you let him do it?” 

“It was a good trade,” Teddy says. “And he wanted to. He volunteered himself. He knew what had to be done.” 

“Did he say anything?” you ask desperately. “Was there anything he wanted us to know? Before he...” You can't finish the sentence. You're thinking about his coffee order, his geode collection. You're thinking about the sticky notes full of stupid little doodles that covered his fridge.

“No,” Teddy tells you, voice gentling just a little. “I’m sorry, Jaylen. He just… left.” 

You sit down heavily on the bench in the locker room. “Why’d you have to let him, Teddy?” 

“We couldn’t stop him,” he says softly. “We wanted you back, and he wanted to be the one to do it. It was brave of him, Jay. Don’t take that from him. He knew he might not return. It was a life for a life.” 

“His life was worth no less than mine,” you say. 

Teddy sighs and says nothing more. 

* * *

Your teammates don’t invite you out to drinks anymore, which shouldn’t surprise you but does all the same. When you’re with them you feel like nothing has changed, like you’re the same Jaylen you always were, a bass guitarist and a singer and a lover and a pitcher and a friend. They smile with you and harmonize with your melodies during band practice and still don’t invite you out to drinks after because when you’re with them you feel like nothing has changed, but that does nothing to alter the fact that, of course, everything has changed.

You stay away and keep winning games for them anyway. It’s the least you can do. 

* * *

You print out a picture from your cell phone to put on your nightstand: you and Mike on the field after a win, taken by Greer. He’s hugging you, head shoved into the junction of your shoulder and your neck, and your hand is raised to ruffle his hair. The photo’s washed out as all hell by the floodlights, but you can still see the smile on your face, still remember how vivid it was then, the blues and reds of the uniform, the way Mike had cheered when you struck the last guy out. He wasn’t jealous. He’d somehow managed to get through the hellscape of being a public figure without ever succumbing to its inherent vanity. He was just. Unselfishly happy for you when you did well. 

Now, when you do well, your friends just look scared. They look at you like you are a monster, like you are a murderer, like you are a ghost. Like you are Jaylen Hotdogfingers back from the dead at last and _maybe we should have just left her there, let her memory sustain us because her_ self _is chain lightning, her_ self _is a goddamn_ nightmare.

_We might have been better off just making our home in her corpse. That, at least, would have kept us fed. What is cannibalism if not a final act of love? What is humanity if not devouring our gods whole?_

* * *

But this _is_ what they wanted, isn’t it. This is what they wanted, here, you on the pitcher’s mound pretending it isn’t a funeral pyre. You on the pitcher’s mound with fire in your hands and blood staining your teeth. You on the pitcher’s mound, nightmare and martyr and king. 

It has to be what they wanted.

* * *

The thing about martyrs is this: they don’t mean anything if they don’t stay dead. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading this Extremely self-indulgent fic!
> 
> also google whale falls, they're incredibly fucking cool and one of my fav phenomenons. it will also make the title make way more sense lol
> 
> you can find me on tumblr @boneroutes if you wanna talk to me there, and kudos/comments are always deeply appreciated. thank you again for reading, have a good day!!! <3


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